Illegal Chinese fishing boats are responsible for the majority of man-made ocean waste found near or in the Galapagos Islands Marine Preserve, which is located off Ecuador’s Pacific coast, the Latin American news site Infobae reported on Monday.
Ecuador’s government announced Monday plans to expand an established marine reserve in the Pacific Ocean surrounding the Galápagos Islands to deter illegal fishing of protected marine life in the area predominantly carried out by China, Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported Wednesday.
An Ecuadorian conservation group called Más Galápagos denounced China on Tuesday for deploying an illegal fishing fleet near Ecuador’s sovereign maritime territory in recent days, the Ecuadorian newspaper El Comercio reported.
Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, warned foreign nations to stay out of the Galápagos Islands in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, a response to reports of hundreds of Chinese fishing ships plundering the natural wonder throughout the summer.
A marine conservation group published an analysis on Wednesday revealing that an armada of Chinese fishing vessels carried out more than 73,000 hours of illegal fishing in the Galápagos between July and August, pulling thousands of tonnes of squid and fish up in the process.
Ecuador’s navy said on Tuesday that nearly 150 fishing boats from a largely Chinese fleet operating near the ecologically sensitive Galápagos Islands have turned off their tracking systems to prevent authorities from monitoring their activities.
The U.S. supports Ecuador in denouncing China’s illegal fishing off the Galápagos Islands, a biologically sensitive marine reserve, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Sunday.
The Ecuadorian Navy is monitoring the presence of hundreds of fishing vessels, many suspected to be Chinese, near the Galapagos Islands and has increased patrols to prevent the ships from entering their ecologically sensitive water, the country’s defense ministry confirmed this weekend.
The driver of a tour bus on the Galapagos Islands has been fined over $11,000 for having accidentally run over a tortoise in danger of extinction, damaging the creature’s shell.
